Tips to cope if your trauma gets triggered during the Christmas holidays
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD is a bear. If you used to love the holidays and experienced a recent trauma, living through it while still coping with PTSD can be a challenge.
The holidays in general can be an extremely difficult time for a lot of people. You are not alone if you white knuckle it through these times. You may feel resentful that other people are obliviously shopping through the season.
You go into a few stores with hopes of finding a a gifts for your children, grandchildren, friends or co-workers. You tell yourself, “I can do this, sure, why not give it a try, it will be fun.” Then as you walk through the stores, it just feels like so much materialism. Mountains of things that have no meaning and yet, there is an expectation that if you love your tribe, you are supposed to enjoy hunting for that one item that means you really understand that one and found the perfect object that will bring them joy when they open it up.
All the while you feel worse than ever because all the happiness around you just compounds your suffering. “Why can’t I just get over it?” Well, you can get over it, if you do the work, but it might not be as easy as what Carole King sings in her song, “Beautiful.” “You've got to get up every morning With a smile in your face And show the world all the love in your heart.”
But morning is a time to set the intentions of the day, and you can even go back further in time to the night before. When putting your head on the pillow, become aware of the space around you. Close your eyes, and imagine the space in the room. Let your imagination tap into the space of your whole house, the area around your house. Pretend you are aware of the space behind you, below you and just hold the thought that you are aware of all the empty space between the objects you know are in and around the room, your house, your yard and in the things of the world. Then notice how you feel after doing this. For a short moment, you quit thinking. You were just pretending you were aware of space. Then when you are more relaxed begin to think of all the things that you did well that day, even if it is something as small as you brushed your teeth and go forward from there. Then think of anything you can, that you are grateful for. When you wake up in the morning ask yourself, “I wonder what curious things I will discover today?”
When you find yourself experiencing an emotion you would rather not be having, ask yourself, “How can I think of this differently?” Or “Isn’t it curious, that just by walking in this store my mood changed so suddenly.” “What can I do to make this experience more fun?”
Make curiosity your new best friend and that emotion you dislike, hold curiosity towards it or maybe even some compassion. This part of you experiencing this emotion, is a part of you. This one that doesn’t like the emotion, that is another part of you. Each part of you does what it does with good intentions. Every emotion you experience, comes from a part that thinks by creating this emotion, it is being helpful. Just because the part has good intentions, doesn’t mean it is effective. Be a very kind adult to all your parts. Let that part, that emotion, know you are an adult now, and you might not know at this moment, how to help it feel better, but you will figure it out. Because this one, this emotion, this part, is probably a very young part of yourself that experienced something unpleasant and formed an extreme distorted belief at the time of the event.
At Surf Ridge Counseling, we can discover some of those events. It is possible to experience less suffering and more joy.
This title idea came from Becky DeGrossa, who helps counselors with their online presence at Counseling Wise.
For more information on trauma therapy click here.
